Anatomy of a close call: The aftermath of Macron’s great gamble

To a certain extent, and against all odds, French president Emmanuel Macron’s call for tactical voting and the forming of a “republican front” against his far-right rivals, the National Rally (RN), worked. In last week’s snap election, the left-wing coalition the New Popular Front (NFP) came ahead, with 180 seats, followed by Macron’s bloc Ensemble with 163 seats, and the RN at 143. Despite the RN’s normalisation strategy of the past few years, many of the local candidates of Marine Le Pen’s party appeared amateurish and extremist. Indeed, after the European Parliament election put the RN in a dangerous winning position, the legislative elections managed to flip the narrative. 

The results confirmed the three-way split of the French electorate between a left bloc, a centrist bloc, and a far-right bloc. With no clear winner, high uncertainty remains over who will govern France as the country enters the ‘third’ and perhaps most strenuous round of its legislative election – the negotiations.

Over the next few days and weeks, several scenarios could emerge. Macron could pick a prime minister out of the camp with the largest number of MPs (the NFP), and the new prime minister would then try to secure support in parliament for his minority government. This would however mean a cohabitation between Macron and the left, unlikely given the antagonism between Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI) and Macron’s camp.

Macron has never demonstrated a strong willingness nor ability to negotiate on his political platform to form a coalition

Alternatively, Macron could explore ways to retain power by building around his centrist bloc. There has been several calls for a large coalition gathering all the parties in the “republican arc” – from Socialists to the centre to the right – and Macron’s himself has hinted at this solution in a “letter to the French” . However, it is unclear whether the more centrist left (the Socialists and the Greens) would split with LFI to join a coalition led by Macron. While a large coalition is probably what would eventuate anywhere else in Europe, it runs contrary to post-1962 French political culture (when it was decided that unless forced into a cohabitation with a majoritarian party, the president concentrates power and popular legitimacy, thus leaving limited space to compromise and coalition-building). On top of this, up until now, Macron has never demonstrated a strong willingness nor ability to negotiate on his political platform to form a coalition.

Conversely, Macron might be willing to instead open to The Republicans and other small right-wing groups, which together won a bit more than 60 seats. It would not be enough for an absolute majority, but it may allow for the formation of a centre-right minority government as the two blocs combined would have more seats than the NFP.

A last alternative is that the president chooses a technocrat to lead a government of experts with the hope that it will get the minimum support to survive – at least for a while. However, this government will have to legislate, bringing the question of the parliamentarian majority back to centre stage.

It is at this stage still difficult to predict what approach will prevail, so French politics will likely enter a phase dominated by the parliament making several attempts to form a government before finding a working coalition.

No matter the scenario, the election results ensure that no major shift in French foreign policy will take place – contrary to what a RN victory would have meant. The constitution means that the president will retain a lot of prerogatives, especially in the case of a technical or grand coalition government where Macron’s ambitions on foreign policy will not be questioned by his prime minister (which would have been the case if RN’s Jordan Bardella assumed the role).

However, French politics will likely be more inward looking, divisive, and unpredictable, which will diminish France’s clout on the European and international stage. For instance, it is possible that important decisions such as increasing support to Ukraine or investing in European defence may become more difficult for France to ratify in its parliament in the coming year. ECFR’s opinion poll data show that, despite continued support to Ukraine, the French public is concerned by the risk of entering in a conflict with Russia. During the European Parliament election campaign, some parties on both the left and the right portrayed Macron as a warmonger after his statement about potentially sending forces to Ukraine. The parties that are the most reluctant to France’s support to Ukraine – mainly LFI and the RN – also gained a significant number of seats in the parliamentary election. Support to Ukraine could therefore reemerge as a point of contention in the French domestic debate.

The NFP, if it were to maintain itself as a bloc, is deeply divided on foreign policy issues. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s LFI, which continues to be the strongest party within the left-wing coalition, has traditionally maintained a rather Eurosceptic, anti-American, anti-NATO posture, with often ambiguous positions on Russia and China. Within the NFP coalition, LFI had to tone down some of its positions and support to Ukraine was only in the NFP’s manifesto following pressures from figures like MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, which led the Socialists’ list during the European Parliament campaign. For now, the left bloc is relishing in its unexpected victory, but strong divergences in foreign policy visions may reemerge very soon. 

The short-term relief of seeing the far-right defeated will thus only be temporary. The election has opened a new chapter of uncertainty and instability, where parties will be constrained to make coalitions and concessions to reach majority, something unnatural to French political culture. Behind the election headlines, Macron’s party still lost a third of its seats in parliament while the RN and its allies increased their share by 60 per cent. Meanwhile, the left, despite its attempts to maintain unity, remains deeply divided, especially on foreign and European policy, and leaderless. The Republicans came out of the elections bruised by the rally of some of its members to the RN, including its president, Éric Ciotti. Macron’s strategy of “me or the chaos” has created growing frustration amongst part of the population who sees this approach as anti-democratic. Finally, deep resentment is brewing amongst RN voters who feel that victory has been stolen from them. The RN and its allies indeed got a larger share of the vote in the second round (37 per cent), far ahead of the NFP’s 26 per cent and Macron’s Ensemble’s 23 per cent – but ended up with many fewer seats due to opponents coalescing: only the mutual withdrawal of a candidates and appeals to support “republican” candidates of other parties against the far-right avoided the RN gaining a majority of seats. If not properly addressed, this brewing frustration, along with the continued fragmentation of the political landscape and growing toxicity of the debate, may well lead to a RN victory in the long run – potentially as soon as the 2027 presidential elections – or to other less democratic avenues for expressing frustration.